{"id":207033,"date":"2023-02-17T10:35:07","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T15:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chemistry-biochemistry\/?p=207033"},"modified":"2023-02-17T10:35:07","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T15:35:07","slug":"professor-shares-cancer-remission-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chemistry-biochemistry\/2023\/02\/17\/professor-shares-cancer-remission-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Shares Cancer Remission Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every five years, to celebrate another milestone anniversary of being cancer-free, Chemistry and Biochemistry Associate Professor Mark Whitener\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/14rLj0ozJkxKdufFjw5zByZaq1iSXQh8O\/view\">gives a talk titled \u201cCancer Chemotherapy through the Eyes and Veins of a Chemist\u201d\u00a0<\/a>at Montclair State University. This year marks his 35th year cancer free.<\/p>\n<p>Whitener, now in his 30th year at Montclair, recently shared his cancer journey in a classroom in Richardson Hall and via Zoom with an audience made up of chemistry and biology students, faculty and the public.<\/p>\n<p>Whitener\u2019s background as a chemist and cancer survivor gives him a unique perspective, one he\u2019s also documented in his online \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/msuweb.montclair.edu\/~whitenerm\/cancer\/MAW_Cancer_Home.html\">Cancer Chronicles<\/a>,\u201d which he wrote 10 years ago to mark 25 years in remission and to serve a wider, non-academic audience.<\/p>\n<p>At the outset, Whitener\u2019s straight talk and humor, something that he, like many people faced with a serious diagnosis, adopted as a coping mechanism, are evident. Displaying a photo of himself as a young bald man, he says, \u201cMost of my hair is gone due to male pattern baldness but I was 27 years old when this happened\u2026because I had cancer chemotherapy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He explains that his presentation, which includes handwritten slides and cartoon-like drawings, is messy and not polished and that the 62-year-old will be turning 35 because he celebrates his \u201csecond birthday\u201d from the last day of his chemotherapy treatment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI like it being messy because going through cancer is pretty messy,\u201d he says. \u201cCancer is bad but there are some good stories. I\u2019m an example of a successful, positive outcome from cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With that he launches into his introduction of how cancer cells grow and spread, chemotherapy treatment and his personal bout with non-Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma as a case study.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span class=\"prpl-button\"><a href=\"\/newscenter\/2023\/02\/13\/professor-shares-cancer-remission-journey\/\">Read the Full Article on the University Press Room<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every five years, Professor Mark Whitener uses himself as case study to impart lessons on disease, chemotherapy and life after cancer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":207034,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chemistry-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chemistry-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chemistry-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chemistry-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chemistry-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chemistry-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207035,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chemistry-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207033\/revisions\/207035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chemistry-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chemistry-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chemistry-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chemistry-biochemistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}